


can't watch you drown anymore, my friend

by pieandsouffle



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Gen, Genocide, Mentions of Character Death, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Holocaust, Mentions of genocide, Some coarse language, Swearing, Tarsus IV, and i think a few swear words are warranted considering the topic, but what the hell they're all adults, tarsus iv massacre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9909194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffle/pseuds/pieandsouffle
Summary: Ordinarily, Nyota's mood would be improved upon discovery that Kirk has indefinitely decided to shut his stupid mouth and let them all study in peace. But with this kind of silence? This kind of uneasiness? It doesn't make her happy. It just doesn't feelright.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this for ages and I can't goddamn finish it!!!! maybe putting it online will force the second part out of me???

            “Abagael.”

            “No.”

            “Abelia?”

            “No.”

            “Abidemi?”

            Nyota Uhura was dangerously close to breaking her PADD in two. A certain infamous cadet – initially well-known for his famous parent, and then better known for his intolerable and remarkable ability of becoming literally everyone’s personal pain in the ass – was grinning at her from across the library table as though he had already finished the pool of assignments they were drowning in and had nothing better to do than to irritate her.

“No,” she managed, glaring down at her half-completed essay on the similarities and differences between the linguistic structures of Vulcan and Romulan.

            “Well, am I getting closer?”

            “You’ve narrowed it down to every other name in the universe apart from those three.”

            “Acacia.”

            “Those four,” she corrected herself.

            Kirk leaned back in his seat, which was balancing dangerously on two legs. Nyota wondered whether she should tell him off or warn him. She then decided it would be more entertaining to watch him fall of his chair. He already had a neat line of stitches across his eyebrow where he’d fallen off a different chair the day before. He’d missed Federation History getting fixed up, and McCoy had thrown a fit that he’d had to miss as well as stitch up his idiotic friend. It most certainly would have been easier to simply regenerate it, but apparently McCoy had decided that if he was going to fall off chairs all the time, then he fully deserved to suffer stitches.

            Kirk opened his mouth again, tapping the table with one forefinger thoughtfully. Uhura braced herself.

            “Adaeze?”

            She gave him no response, choosing instead to ignore him as well as she possibly could and focus on her essay. Now, Vulcan tended to have monosyllabic or abrupt-sounding prepositions and conjunctions, while Romulan –

            “Adanna. It’s Adanna, isn’t it? I’m calling this one.”

            “It’s not Adanna.” She looked up to see a smug look dripping off his face. “You aren’t even a twenty-sixth through the alphabet, and that’s _only_ including Terran names.”

            “I’ll get to the others later,” Kirk replied easily. “I’ve got three years to get through them all. If I get through a hundred a day, I’ll have gotten through just under a hundred and ten thousand. It’s bound to be one of them.”

            Nyota found herself somewhat horrified by this concept. But she swallowed down her complaint and gave him a predatory smile. “I won’t let you make today’s quota if you don’t let me finish this essay,” she said pleasantly.

            Kirk didn’t appear particularly fazed by this threat. In fact, he coolly ran his hand through his hair and just continued smiling annoyingly. “Listen Adelaide… death threats aren’t going to put me off this mission. Adeline.”

            “Wrong.”

            “Admiranda.”           

            “I’m a hundred per cent sure that that isn’t a real name.”

            “Sure it is. It’s an elaborated form of ‘Miranda’, which is a name used by Shakespeare, which is in turn derived from the Latin _mirandus,_ and that means – ”

            “ _Kirk._ I don’t _care._ Let me _study._ ”

            Kirk’s mock outrage prodded Nyota’s emotions somewhere between ‘extreme irritation’ and ‘mild amusement’. “The xenolinguist? The xenolinguist doesn’t _care_ about the evolution and ornamentation of words, names and titles over a period of several centuries, based on the popularity of – ”

            “You need to shut up.”

            “Make me.”

            “I won’t be on your crew the next time you make some lame attempt to win the Kobayashi Maru,” Uhura threatened.

            Kirk’s face went slack. “You wouldn’t do that to me.” Wow. He seemed to be taking that seriously. “I thought you were my friend, Adrienne.”

He burst into a wide grin.

            Uhura saw scarlet for a few seconds, and it most certainly wasn’t from their vibrant cadet reds. “I’ll tell you my name if you go away and never speak to me again for the entirety of our training, and the foreseeable future beyond that.”

            Kirk’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how that works. It seems like a pretty one-sided deal.”

            “You’d be correct. ”

            “But if I don’t speak to you for the rest of our time at the Academy,” Kirk continued as though he hadn’t heard her, “who’s gonna help you with your physics when you inevitably need tutoring?”

            “Literally anyone else. Anyone who doesn’t have sex with farm animals.” She regretted saying that immediately. Repeating old insults? Weak, Nyota, weak. Unoriginal. She might as well have just told him that he'd won this particular argument.

            Kirk seemed to agree. “Are you still going on with that?” he asked, looking mildly insulted, but mostly disappointed. “I thought you’d long since come to terms with that. You shouldn’t judge, Starfleet is supposed to be an open-minded organisation.” Nyota opened her mouth to retort, but he hurriedly continued. “And anyway, you need me to tutor you because I am the _best_.” Kirk planted all four of his chair’s legs back on the ground. Nyota felt slightly disappointed that he hadn’t toppled over backwards.

            “Gaila’s good at physics,” she retorted.

            “Ah yes,” Kirk acknowledged, “but she’s in a completely different class learning completely different subject matter.”

            “She’s also not failing history.”

            Kirk’s face fell just a fraction. “She’s also – actually, how do my history scores have any effect on the fact that I’m the best in physics?”

            “It’s a one-up on you,” Nyota responded. “For the love of _everything,_ just let me _get back to work._ ”

            “The only reason I’m failing – hang on, I’m not even _failing.”_

            “You’re failing what?”

            Nyota looked up to see the perpetually crabby Doctor McCoy throw a PADD down beside Kirk, looking deeply amused for a change.

            “I’m not failing anything. Agatha here is spreading malicious rumours with no basis of fact.”

            “He’s failing Federation History,” Nyota informed the doctor.

            “He _is_ failing history,” McCoy agreed.

            “So?” Kirk said crabbily. “I know the subject matter. Who cares about structure of an essay?”

            “Everyone,” Nyota said reasonably.

            “If something historical suddenly becomes relevant, it’s not like I’m gonna have to write a damn essay about it. Just _knowing_ is fine.”

            “Well, that’s all great and fine,” McCoy interjected, “but since you didn't show up to class _that_ argument of yours just took a swan dive out the nearest window.”

            “Yeah, well _you_ weren’t there either,” Kirk said defensively. “You were too busy stitching up my eyebrow. And anyway, back to what we were _actually_ talking about: what kind of system is it where your overall grade is based on some bullshit essay and not a discussion?”

            “The one used at Starfleet.”

            “I call bullshit. You can’t base your entire Xenolinguistics grade on an essay, it’s on how well you understand and how well you can implement the material. You aren’t gonna write an essay on syntax during negotiations with Klingons or whatever.”

            Unfortunately, Kirk’s point did seem to be remotely rational, and Nyota didn’t particularly feel like stroking his ego by admitting she agreed somewhat. She opted instead to remain silent, and attempted to cram a few more sentences into her essay as Kirk began bickering with McCoy over whose fault it was that they weren’t in their last Federation History lecture.

            She managed – quite impressively – to finish the first draft and was rereading it cautiously when Kirk decided that he was losing his argument and that harassing Nyota was a better way of spending his time. And thankfully, at that very moment, the bell signifying the beginning of the ten-minute gap between classes rang.

            “History now, gotta go.” Nyota snatched up her PADD and her bag, profusely thanked clichés, and rushed out of the library before Kirk could even get a word out.

* * *

 

            Nyota was settled reasonably comfortably in her seat next to Gaila and Christine when Kirk eventually traipsed in, right as the bell blared, and narrowly escaped an extra three laps of the assault course. He grinned at Nyota, blew a kiss to Gaila, and threw himself into the seat beside McCoy, who looked annoyed yet fond of the idiot next to him.

            “Afternoon,” Doctor Gill said absently as he scrolled through the roll call, eyes flicking up to place students. “It’s nice to see that everyone’s here today. That’s an impressive cut on your head, Kirk. Clearly the reason you weren’t present yesterday?”

            “Thank you, sir. And yes.” Kirk grinned. McCoy scowled. Nyota rolled her eyes.

            Gill smiled lightly. “Anyway, excellent to see you all. As you all know, we’re continuing the topic we’ve been working on the past term.”

            Nyota was pleased to see that Kirk now looked concerned. Good. Maybe he’d take history a little more seriously now that he’d missed the last unit they’d done on the Xindin massacre.

It was a very nasty unit that they were covering this trimester, summed up by the phrase ‘the results of uncontrolled social and racial prejudices’. It was unpleasant, but necessary. As Starfleet was the exploratory branch of Earth’s space industry and spent the majority of its time discovering new civilisations, it was necessary for them to learn to recognise symptoms of such bigotries before they could increase to the intensity that started genocides.

Somehow, people just didn’t learn.

            “What have we already discussed? I know we’ve done the Native American genocide, the Holocaust, the Armenian, Rwandan… let’s see…”

            “The 2067 Phillip Green campaign,” a cadet piped up.

            “Yes, Phillip Green…”

            “The Valakian and the Xindin incident,” Christine said seriously, despite the fact that she’d missed the last lesson as well. She’d been holding Kirk down while McCoy had stitched up his face.

            “Ah, that’s right! And of course, the Eugenics war. Well, since we’ve covered all that, I think it’s about time to move to our most recent incident. Namely, the Tarsus IV massacre.”

            There was absolute silence.

Nyota winced. Logically, she’d known they were _always_ going to study the Tarsus IV massacre at some point, but she’d hoped she would’ve been able to have a little more time to prepare for it. As a class that spent more time analysing motive rather than dates, she could tell that they were in for some very controversial discussions regarding the acts of Governor Kodos ‘the Executioner’.

            Normally she wouldn’t have been all that worried to study such an event, especially following the Nazi Holocaust and the Eugenics war, but the fact that it was a very recent incident – occurring when she was only fourteen or so – made it a little more difficult for her to take an objective stance. As Kirk had said earlier, the purpose of being knowledgeable in Federation history was to be able to act using that information when it became relevant. With Earth having such experience in genocides and massacres, it made it more horrifying that the Tarsus IV incident had occurred even with that knowledge.

            She snatched a quick glimpse around the room of other people’s reactions. Christine was deadly serious. Finnegan’s normal sneer had evaporated and he looked quite awkward. A younger cadet appeared as though he might faint. And Kirk’s eyes had glazed over.

            Disrespectful fuck.

            Nyota turned back to the front of the class.

            “Before we get started, can someone please tell me what they know about Tarsus IV?” Gill looked out at a sea of cadets, every one of them unwilling to make a comment. “No…?”

            Nyota sighed, and reluctantly put a hand up. If she answered, it’d save time that Gill would have spent explaining what they all already knew. Then they could learn what they all _didn’t,_ finish the essay they would be undoubtedly assigned, and move on to a more pleasant topic.

            “Uhura! Thank you.” He gestured towards her, and she began.

            “Tarsus IV was a Federation colony established by Earth-Romulan war veterans some time in the late 2100s. In 2246 a mutagenic fungus was tested on the major crops by an eco-terrorism group, and the vast majority of the food supply was destroyed. There were only enough rations remaining for half the population – ” here the words tasted sour, “ – and the governor chose to execute half of the population before Starfleet could provide aid.”

            “An excellent summary, Cadet Uhura,” Gill said. Nyota felt very awkward. “Yes, that is essentially what happened there.” Gill paced a little, smiling mildly at the cadets in the lecture theatre. “I think we’ll begin with the Symmetrists. As Uhura kindly told us, the Symmetrists are an eco-terrorist group who had – how should I put this? – major beef with the Federation’s tendency to land on planets, traipse around for a while, and leave without consideration for the planet’s ecology.”

            Faint laughter echoed around the theatre. It stopped quickly.

            “Now, I’d hardly call myself an expert on this group in particular, especially its recent exploits, so I’ll keep this brief. The Symmetrists quickly claimed responsibility of the fungus after Starfleet’s arrival on Tarsus and during the relief efforts.” Gill paused, and surveyed them.

            Apparently deciding that the expressions on their faces were not vacant, but instead reluctant, he continued.

            “Now, the fungus – or really, it _could_ be classified as a virus; oddly enough the effects and properties of the organism when analysed proved remarkably similar to both types of prokaryotes … that was a source of great confusion and a tremendous numbers of arguments when classifying it; you’ll find it has been reported as a fungus and a virus alternatively – ” he stopped himself. “Apologies. Anyway, the fungus suddenly and efficiently decimated the food supply of Tarsus IV.”

            Nyota glanced over at McCoy, who looked disgusted at the prospect of an organism resembling both a virus and a fungus. Beside him, Kirk still looked blank and as though he wasn’t listening at all, but there was vein pulsing in his temple, and his hand resting on the desk was clenched into a fist, white-knuckled.

            “Now, the population of Tarsus IV at this point was relatively small; only a little over eight-thousand. The colony was quite proficient in its growing of food, enough that they found it unnecessary to conserve and store food due to the fact it was easily available.”

            Nyota felt a lurch in her stomach. Gaila beside her looked politely intrigued. Of course, Gaila would have been in the Orion system at the time, and wouldn’t have heard of the event except if it were offhandedly mentioned. Nyota was somewhat glad that Gaila hadn’t heard much about it beforehand – the Orion slave trade was surely enough.

            “So when their crops began dying, it sent the colonists into a bit of a panic.”

            That had to be the grossest understatement of all time. All the other professors looked deeply uncomfortable when Tarsus was mentioned, so it was both against Gill and to his credit that he could take such an objective stance so as to describe the hysteria as ‘a bit of a panic’.

            “Now the governor at the time was a human called Kodos. After the crops died, Kodos came to the quite unwelcome discovery that there were only enough rations for half of the population to survive until Starfleet aid was supposed to arrive. This was, of course, provided that half of the population immediately stopped eating.

            “Here’s where it gets controversial. After this realisation, Kodos believed that the best solution – apart from allowing half the population to starve – was to execute them as quickly as possible. Hence his well-known title, ‘the Executioner’.”

            There were a few murmurs, and then silence swelled up like a wave.

            “Kodos had a following, mostly military… due to the widespread panic, they were easily able to overthrow the democratic government that ruled Tarsus, and instigated his own rule. After his revolution, the population was quickly divided into two sections, based on Kodos’s _personal_ theories of eugenics.” Gill cleared his throat. “Now, _this_ is where it gets unpleasant.

            “The population was divided based on how useful Kodos deemed them to be to the society as a whole. Engineers, agriculturalists… scientists were generally considered ‘worthy’ of saving. Others, people with no ‘proper’ place in the community, the ill, the young, the old, were considered – ” here Gill paused delicately, “ – a waste of resources. And so the colony was split quite neatly down the middle. The vast majority of children on Tarsus – over a thousand under thirteen – were listed as expendable and were executed.”

            Nyota felt even sicker than before. Gaila looked horrified, but not surprised, as though she already suspected people would condemn children as such.

            “Sir,” Cadet Riley said, raising his hand. “I have a psych re-evaluation scheduled now.”

            “Oh,” Gill said, frowning. “This is quite an important unit; is there no way to reschedule it, Riley?”

            Riley gave a thin smile. “No, sir. But I already know quite a lot on the topic, and I can do some extra reading during free periods.”

            Kirk, who was in the seat in front of Riley, turned around and exchanged an odd look with the younger cadet. It wasn’t a smirk or a glare. It was strange, somehow supportive and ironic and unhappy. Maybe Kirk had something to do with the Riley’s psych evaluation … he was enough to drive anyone nuts.

            “All right then, Riley, off you go,” Gill said reluctantly. “See that you do extra reading.”

            “You can count on it, sir,” Riley answered. He was very pale. Nyota watched him leave. As she flicked her gaze back to Doctor Gill, Kirk momentarily caught it again. His lip seemed to have decided to give up against his teeth, and was bleeding slowly down his chin.

            The rest of the lecture passed by in a haze of swooping sensations in the stomach and general feelings of nausea. It was only towards the end, when Gill detailed the arrival of Starfleet and the anonymous Tarsus Nine that Nyota began to feel a little better.

            “The Tarsus Nine are the _only_ colonists who were designated as redundant, herded into the hall for execution, and lived to tell the tale. The majority of them were children, and escaped under the influence of one of the eldest of the Nine, who is believed to have spent the remaining months protecting the others and stealing food for them. The Nine, after their rescue, remained unnamed in the media and were brought back to their respective home planets anonymously. The only people who are aware of the Nine’s identities are Starfleet’s highest ranking and the Nine themselves. And interestingly enough, they are the only ones who know what Kodos looked like.” Gill opened his mouth to tell them of some other pearl of information, but then the bell rang. Nyota felt enormously relieved.

            “Your assignment is an objective essay detailing the positive and negative points of Kodos’s decisions,” Gill called over the top of the chatter that began. “And emphasis on the ‘objective’, I don’t want any biased essays. To hand in on Thursday.”

            Cadets began exiting the theatre, chatting amiably among themselves. Nyota stuffed her notes back into her bag, and checked under her seat for anything she might have lost.

            “How about _that_ then?” she asked Gaila as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder, content with the fact she hadn’t dropped anything. “Still think humans are cute, cuddly and friendly?”

            “Some of them are,” Gaila maintained. “The ones who aren’t murdering psychopaths, anyway. Hey, Jimmy! Are you studying with me for computer physics after?”

            Nyota noticed with some displeasure that Kirk was still in his seat beside McCoy, who was swearing rapidly and digging through his bag for something apparently misplaced. Kirk’s eyes were focused on something in the distance, and he was still pallid.

            If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was quite distressed. But James Kirk didn’t _get_ distressed. He could have every limb painfully removed and he’d still bounce around cheerfully, flirting with anything that could breathe.

            “Jimmy?” Gaila shook his shoulder, her smile dropping a little. “You’re bleeding.”

            “What?” he looked up at her, confused. As though he’d only just noticed her.

            Gaila wiped away the blood on his chin with a concerned hand. “Ow. How’d you do that?”

            “Skill,” he replied easily putting on one of his dazzling grins. It seemed a little stale.

            “Idiocy,” McCoy interjected without looking up.

            Gaila eyed Kirk suspiciously before she just decided to smile at him. “Are you on for computer study after Xenoling.?”

            “Yeah. Yeah!” he brightened. “Duh. You coming, Alexandra?”

            “No,” Nyota said flatly.

            “It’ll be fun!” Gaila insisted.

            Nyota couldn’t think of less rewarding time than that which was spent with Kirk and Gaila flirting at Warp 6, and jabbering away in physics terms she had difficulty understanding. “As much as I would adore spending time with my least favourite person of all time,” she said, “I have to talk to Commander Spock.”

            Gaila raised her eyebrows.

            “You have fun, Alice. And you shouldn’t talk about Gaila that way.” Kirk grinned obnoxiously. He seemed to be back to him old irritating self. And somehow, Nyota felt glad; to see Kirk silent and staring miserably into the distance was as disconcerting as anything.

* * *

 

            “I’m worried about Jim,” Gaila said the moment Nyota walked in to their dormitory.

            “Good thing you’re the one worrying about him; no one else does,” Nyota replied.

            On the rare occasion when one _did_ worry about Kirk, it could be over myriad of things. Whether he’d get into a fight. Whether he’d flirt incessantly with a professor and get them all running extra laps of the assault course. Whether he’d be arrested for public indecency. Every time someone worried about Kirk, it wasn’t about his well-being, but what he was doing to _others’_ well-beings. She threw her bag down beside her bed and started searching for her pyjamas.

            “That’s not true. Doctor McCoy worries about him too. And anyway, he seemed concerned when I spoke to him.” Gaila didn’t seem particularly put off by Nyota’s less-than-caring assessment of her – boyfriend? Or something along those lines. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure. Whatever they were, they seemed to like one another.

            And Gaila was Nyota’s friend, so Nyota was obligated to give her some advice. Whether it was useful or not, only Gaila could decide.

            “Dump him,” she said with finality. “Best solution.”

            “I’m not going to _dump him_!” Gaila said with mild concern. “What would that solve?”

            “Well,” said Nyota, “he’ll get out of your hair, for a start.”

            “It’s not going to change the fact that I’m worried about him though! He was acting really strange when we were studying, and did you see his face after the lecture about Tarsus?” Gaila looked genuinely concerned. And, Nyota realised with some surprise, _she_ was worried about Kirk as well.

            “I did,” she said finally, flopping down beside Gaila. “He looked so blank! I never thought I’d see him lost for words like that.”

            “He was very quiet during our study session,” Gaila told her. “I mean, he wasn’t _quiet_ but he was quieter than usual, you know? Even quieter than he’d been when we did the other massacre-y topics. And he was quiet about them _too_ , you know?”

            Nyota filtered through the ‘quiet’s and managed to understand the message. “I know.” Which wasn’t strictly true.

            “He kept staring off into the distance. I had to say his name a few times to get his attention. I think the lecture had something to do with it.” Gaila absently started playing with Nyota’s hair, like she always did when she was a bit upset.

            “Well…” Nyota shrugged. “Tarsus is an awful topic; humans don’t like talking about it. I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t sombre if it ever came up.”

            “I never really heard of it beforehand.”

            “You wouldn’t’ve. The population was mostly human, so I guess it just wasn’t relevant in Orion.”

            Gaila was silent for a few moments. “2246, huh? That’s pretty recent.”

            “Yeah. Ten years ago in a month. I was only a kid when it happened. It was so weird hearing about it, you know? It was such a foreign concept; a massacre instigated by humans against humans hadn’t happened in years and years. And then it just _did_. It happened, and so _quickly._ That was what I thought was the worst part, and probably what the media thought too. Humans have had so much experience like that. And we’re supposed to learn from past mistakes, and when the odds fell against the settlers… their leader just had them killed. Like we’d learned nothing at all.”

            “You should stop saying ‘we’,” Gaila said wisely. “It’s connecting you with the event and I’m pretty sure it’s distressing you.”

            “That’s probably why Kirk’s upset. Hell, that cadet that left early looked just as upset. It upsets everyone.” She stopped, and smiled at Gaila. “I’m pretty sure that’s all Kirk’s distressed about. Nasty topic. That’s all.”

            Gaila _hmmed_ and finished off the braid she’d arranged Nyota’s hair into. “You’re probably right. I won’t bring it up when I see him tomorrow.”

            “Probably best,” Nyota nodded.

            “Mm.”


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This hasn't been beta-ed or proofread, I word-vomited it out just then. Man, it feels good to have finished it though.

     “Jim, what did you write for justifications to Kodos’s actions?” McCoy asked, squinting down at Kirk’s essay.

     Nyota surreptitiously tuned into the conversation. She noticed Gaila did the same, her head tilted to the side as though she were only concentrating on her own essay. She appeared to be reading it with great focus, but her eyes were fixed at some single, distant point.

     Kirk remained silent.

     “Did you write anything at all? Christ Jim, Gill’ll skin you.”

     “Sure I wrote stuff,” Kirk said eventually, after a few more moments of intense silence. He grabbed the PADD back, and scrolled to the end of the essay. “I have a paragraph right there.”

     McCoy took back the PADD and paused for a few seconds. “‘There are no justifications for Kodos’s actions, except for the fact he was a stark raving psychotic lunatic with a superiority complex who decided to play God. And that’s a pretty shitty excuse. Conclusion: no justifications, because saying that there _are_ is a grotesque insult to the thousands he killed. Fuck off,’” he read aloud.

     McCoy blinked rapidly, stared at the PADD, and turned to Kirk disbelievingly. “What the fuck?”

     Kirk’s jaw tightened. “I’m being truthful. There were no justifications. You can’t just pick and choose who you’re gonna kill because ‘oh, it’s gonna save these people!’ No living being has the authority to do that!”

     “Did you not understand the assignment? Christ, you’re gonna fail it if you don’t change this!”

     “Well, good thing I don’t care. People died. I’m not gonna dishonour them by saying ‘oh, hey, Kodos actually had good reason to kill them all! Hah, good thing we had such a logical thinking guy there!’”

     “Well, he did kill them,” McCoy said with the air of man treading on tremendously thin ice, “and nothing’s gonna change that. And yeah, four thousand people died, I listened to the fucking lecture, Jim. And he deserved what he got, but really? You think he actually _wanted_ to kill them? What would you have done if you’d been in his position?!”

     “Not fucking that.” Kirk suddenly looked more dangerous than Nyota had ever seen.

     To her, he’d never seemed threatening in the slightest. Even when he first accosted her at that bar in Iowa, she’d been able to immediately identify him as self-centred and the proud owner of a massive ego, but never a genuine threat. More of … an act than anything else. A pain in the ass, yes. But not dangerous. She’d never been too bothered before to work out what exactly that act was covering.

     But now… maybe she was getting a glimpse of what raw hurt was beneath that thin veneer of braggadocio.

     “I can’t believe you’re fucking justifying that _massacre._ ”

     “Well, it was part of the damn assignment,” McCoy retorted. “You think I actually agree with what he did? Hell, I’m a _doctor,_ not a governor. My job’s to _save_ people, not herd ‘em off for slaughter! If I’d been there, I wouldn’t’ve killed anyone; but I sure understand _why_ Kodos did what he did. And that’s the purpose of the damn assignment, Jim!”

     “Because taking an objective stance for a school assignment is more important than respecting the people he murdered.” Kirk’s voice was cold.

     “I didn’t say – ”

     “Well it sure _sounded_ like it,” Kirk snapped. He smiled, but it was all wrong. Bitter and cold, and not really a smile at all. He snatched back his PADD out of McCoy’s hands, stuffed it into his bag and stalked off without another word.

     Nyota realised that she had dropped her stylus at some point, and Gaila wasn’t even pretending to ignore the argument, and was now blatantly watching everything.

     McCoy looked lost for words. He blinked helplessly a few times, and then turned to Nyota and Gaila. Maybe they hadn’t been as subtle as she’d hoped.

     He jerked a finger over his shoulder towards the door. “What the hell was that?!”

     Nyota shook her head, aghast. “I don’t know. You’re his friend. He hasn’t done that before? Gaila?”

     Gaila’s hair hit Nyota’s shoulder as she shook her head solemnly. “It’s something about the subject, I think.”

     “Massacres?”

     “Yes.” Gaila shuffled over to McCoy, dragging Nyota with her. “Jim hasn’t been right since we started the whole ‘a history of Terran massacres’. He was fidgety during the Holocaust, a bit sullen during the Green campaign, and he was just sort of disgusted when we were doing the Eugenics war.”

     “I noticed that, but he still wrote those essays. It’s only this one he’s really had a _reaction_ to.” McCoy scowled. Undoubtedly, Kirk would be hit with a hypo in the very near future.

     Gaila blinked owlishly, and sat up straight as she came to some kind of epiphany. “Tarsus was a recent incident, right?”

     “I think nine years ago counts as recent, yeah.”

     “And the Kirks were a very influential family. I mean, _everyone_ knows about George Kirk, the _Kelvin,_ and Winona Kirk the famous Federation intergalactic mercenary.”

     “Don’t say that in front of Jim,” McCoy advised.

     “What, ‘intergalactic mercenary’? Jimmy came up with it. And Winona likes it, she said she likes sounding like a space pirate instead of a captain.”

     “Right,” said Nyota. She didn’t say anything, but she hadn’t realized that Winona Kirk was _Jim_ Kirk’s mother. Captain Kirk was one of those individuals that seemed to occupy photographs and portraits all over the academy. In fact, there was a blown-up photo of a much-younger Winona Kirk standing with an elderly Japanese woman about ten feet away from where the cadets were sitting at that moment.

     It was weirder knowing that Gaila had met Winona Kirk, and that the woman liked being called an intergalactic mercenary rather than any reasonable title.

     “My point is that as the Kirks were a very influential family – I mean, Captain Pike is practically Jim’s foster father – anyway, they would have known a lot of people. And maybe someone who was _on_ Tarsus during the massacre.”

     “Which would explain his reaction to the topic,” Nyota finished. She sometimes forgot that Gaila was not only conventionally intelligent in the fields of mathematics and engineering, but she also possessed the uncanny knack of understanding people better than anyone else. She’d gone into an in-depth analysis of Commander Spock that was, frankly, spot-on and quite terrifying. A display of logic Spock himself would have been impressed by.

     McCoy looked upset. “Well, he should have damn _said_ something!” he snapped. “I wouldn’t have said anything about it if I’d known!”

     “Well, no one knows,” Gaila said reasonably, patting him on the shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

     McCoy’s distressed eyebrows made a valiant attempt to bury themselves in his hairline. “I basically said ‘hey Jim, your friend was murdered or starved by this bastard, and now you gotta say the killer was justified! Hey, how about that? Why are you getting pissy about this?! You’re only _defending_ the guy.’” He sat back and sighed. “I’m an idiot. I’m gonna buy him a bottle of brandy.”

     “Hold on a second,” Nyota interrupted. “Remember, nothing’s been confirmed. We’re still just _assuming_ that he had friends or relatives there. It could just be something that he’s passionate about.” She didn’t really believe that, but it was logical – ahem, it was _wise_ to cover all bases. “We can’t approach him on a theory.”

     McCoy’s expression did not change. “It makes sense, though. I mean how old was the kid when it happened? Twelve? Thirteen? Tarsus had a ton of schools, and as old Gill said, kids were classified as ‘wastes of resources.’”

     There was a very long and nasty silence.

     “You’re saying the person who died was a child.”

     “Well, yeah,” McCoy continued. “Kid finds out his friend is murdered on Tarsus. Kids – ”

     “ – Aren’t exactly emotionally mature,” Nyota finished. “It’d would’ve hit him hard. And he’s not exactly … emotionally stable now. But look, we don’t have evidence. We can feel bad about it later, but we need to get some sort of proof that he knew someone before we can assume anything.”

     “Like what? We can’t just run up to some Tarsus survivors and say ‘do any of you happen to know the Kirks? Or know anyone who was brutally murdered who knew the Kirks?’”

     “We can look through the victims’ and survivors’ records,” Gaila suggested. “We won’t be able to look at those ten survivors – ”

     “The Nines,” McCoy corrected.

     “The Nines, then, but they’re probably not relevant. If we find anyone who the Kirks might have known, then we can talk to him about it.”

     “Or just avoid the topic altogether. Jim doesn’t like talking about his childhood.”

     “That’s unhealthy,” Nyota said immediately. “I can’t even _start_ to talk about how unhealthy that is. And he’s been keeping this shit to himself for the last nine years?”

     “I could swear you said like three seconds ago that we were jumping to conclusions.”

     “Well, _yeah_ , we are. But it’s likely, anyway. I think we should just be cautious, be _nice_ until we work out what his problem is. Maybe it’s just PMS.”

     McCoy snorted.

* * *

 

     Two days later, Nyota had access to the victims’ and survivors’ records. She felt only slightly guilty that she had lied to Commander Spock about why she needed access, but judging by his raised eyebrow, he suspected she wasn’t being truthful and gave her access anyway.

     “Alright,” she said, giving Gaila and McCoy each a PADD. She had already divided the list of names into three, one third on each of the PADDs, and there was no chance that they would be interrupted by Kirk himself: there was a conference that all cadets on Command track needed to attend, and he would not return until Thursday – three days away. “Here are the names. It’ll be quicker if we all look through. We’ve only got – what, two and a half thousand names each?”

     McCoy looked uncomfortable. “Savea, Fetuilalage,” he read aloud from his PADD. “Human. Four years old.” He stared at the picture accompanying the brief biography, detailing probable cause of death.

     The causes were undoubtedly all going to be the same.

     Gaila scrolled through her names. “This is going to be a very long day.”

     Nyota sighed. “Tell me about it.”

* * *

 

     It was on Wednesday night, disconcertingly close to midnight and, by extension, Kirk’s return to the campus, that a knock on their door distracted Gaila and Nyota from their PADDs of the deceased.

     “It’s McCoy!” the person said helpfully, followed by, “I’ve found who it was! Or I think, anyway. Dammit, it was staring us in the face!”

     Nyota and Gaila exchanged surprised looks, and Gaila dashed for the door. It slid open to reveal McCoy standing there grimly, PADD in hand.

     “Who?” Nyota asked, putting her PADD down in her lap.

     “Hoshi Sato,” McCoy told her, and Nyota snatched the device out of his hands.

     “Hoshi Sato? _The_ Hoshi Sato?” Her eyes roamed over the biography, scrolling faster and faster the more she read. “She was just about the most famous linguist Starfleet ever had! She was a complete expert in exo-linguistics… she could speak languages that most humans are physically _incapable_ of speaking!”

     “Wasn’t that because she had throat surgery to make it possible?” Gaila asked.

     “Shut up, you’re talking about my hero.”

     Gaila shrugged, and then looked puzzled. “You’d think Kodos would have found use for such a talented person,” she said slowly. “Someone with such experience and ability; why was she executed?”

     “Keep reading,” McCoy ordered darkly.

     Nyota scrolled to the end of the biography, and gasped. “She wasn’t _supposed_ to be executed!”

     “Yeah,” McCoy replied dryly. “She was killed for – uh – ‘inciting rebellion’ among those chosen to live, and stealing supplies for those who weren’t.”

     “’It was to the credit of Sato’s linguistic abilities that she managed to convince a great many surviving species to rebel against Governor Kodos’ orders and protect those selected for execution’,” Nyota read aloud. “’Sato’s uprising in the making was quashed shortly after its birth when a member betrayed them to Kodos’ authorities. Sato and husband Takashi Kimura were identified as ringleaders, and executed with the rest of the rebellion.’” She paused, and soaked in the information.

     “How does this relate to Jimmy?” Gaila asked, looking up from the PADD. “She’s not related to him.”

     McCoy snorted. “Well, not _biologically_ related, but Jim talks about Sato a lot. Even more than his mother. From what he’s said, she was like a makeshift grandmother.”

     Nyota digested that fact. Son of Winona Kirk. Foster son of Christopher Pike. And now, foster _grand_ -son of Hoshi Sato. “So his grandmother was killed by Kodos for resisting his rule. That’s why he’s acting like this. She was selected to live, and instead she fought against him and his rhetoric. Kirk is doing practically the same, resisting writing an essay supporting Kodos because it’s inherently _wrong_ to do so.”

     McCoy looked glum. “And I told him to write an essay about why Kodos was reasonable.”

     “Statistically, he was. Morally and ethically, he wasn’t,” Gaila said wisely. “It’s easy for us to look at it statistically as we were lucky enough not to be there, but others can’t say the same. History’s like that. It’s easy to dismiss when it didn’t happen to us, or when it had no effect on us.”

     Nyota handed the PADD back to McCoy, and powered her own down. There was no point to reading any more of the names. She didn’t want to anyway. There had been too many profiles of children.

     “So we know who he lost,” she said. “The question is, what are we going to about it now?”

* * *

 

     The agreement was that they would, as a group of three (not just company, but not quite a crowd), accost Kirk, drag him off somewhere quiet and private, and tell him that they knew. Nyota didn’t know what to expect. Would his reaction be quiet resignation? Outright denial? Anger? Kirk was proving himself to be a far more complicated person than she had suspected even when she first met him, and she could no longer predict anything about him.

     It was a reasonable plan, in any case. They could offer him sympathy and support, a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen should he desire any help. A group intervention was best, they had decided. Rip off the medipatch in one quick motion, and have all three of them there to be a balm. He’d have the support of his three best friends.

     Nyota blinked, wondering when she had become his friend, and shook her head to clear it. She needed to proofread the linguistics essay one final time before submitting it to the linguistics department.

     She meandered her way to the linguistics wing, eyes peeled for any typos in the essay that might bring her grade down and was, for all intents and purposes, senseless to the world. The distant sound of someone crying wound its way around the explanations of syntax, and she wished it would stop, and –

     Someone was crying?

     She looked up, taking a second to orientate herself. She was in an empty corridor flanked by doors to various lecture theatres. The door to the closest, the Gul Theatre for physics, was open. The quiet weeping was emanating from there.

     “… I don’t know, I can’t handle it,” a teary voice said.

     Nyota sighed. The speaker sounded very young; undoubtedly a freshman who hadn’t adapted to the fast-paced Starfleet agenda and was struggling. She saved her essay and shut the PADD down, moving towards the door. Perhaps she could help the poor kid, she thought absently, but the next voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

     “You can,” Kirk’s voice said earnestly. “I know it’s never over, but you’ve gotten this far, right? You survived the massacre, you survived this unit, and you can survive what comes next, can’t you?”

     Nyota’s heartbeat echoed in her ears, and she had to repeat Kirk’s last sentence in her head, turning the words over.

     They had finished the Tarsus unit only that morning. She recognised the first voice now: Cadet Riley, a sixteen-year-old prodigy. He left class early on the day they started the unit…

     He would’ve been only six or seven at the time, too young to be of any use to Kodos. He could only have been sent to be executed.

     And if he had been set for execution, and was somehow standing, alive and well, on the other side of the wall Nyota was bracing herself against, then he could only be one type of survivor.

     A Nine. There was a Nine at Starfleet Academy.

     “I promise you, you’ll be fine. The worst is over,” Kirk continued gently. “We’re okay, aren’t we?”

     Nyota felt something warm uncurl in her chest. It was such an alien reaction to Kirk’s words that it took her a moment just what it was.

     Affection, she realised, and admiration. Kirk, a person who presented himself as the epitome of arrogance and selfishness, was going parsecs out of his way to support another who had gone through something horrific.

_The worst is over. We’re alive, aren’t we?_

     Nyota blinked, and tensed. _We_?

     “Barely!” Riley sounded more upset. “I’m not okay! I saw Kodos kill my mother! And if you hadn’t grabbed me and run then he would’ve killed me too! All of us would’ve died if you hadn’t been there, and these people expect me to say that Kodos was – was _justified_ and right and reasonable and I _can’t do it!”_

     Nyota’s blood chilled in her veins, and time froze. Somewhere, a great distance away, Riley and Kirk were still talking, but the only thing she could hear was Riley’s last words, replaying over and over and over in her head.

     If _Kirk_ had not grabbed Riley, Riley would have died; Riley was on Tarsus; If Riley was on Tarsus, then Kirk was on Tarsus, and they were both children so her theory was wrong, wrong, wrong.

     Nyota sprinted away, her essay all but forgotten until she collided into Commander Spock. It was like running into a wall, she almost bounced off him.

     “Commander!” She gasped, clutching her side. “I’m so sorry!”

     “It is fine,” Spock acknowledged. “I suspect due to my advanced physiology the collision injured you more than myself. Are you well, cadet?” He did look as though the crash had not affected him, although his fringe was no longer as neat as it had been seconds earlier.

     “Fine, sir,” she managed to reply. “I was on the way to submitting an essay when I remembered something extremely important I had to do.”

     “I find it difficult to believe there is something more important than the submission of an essay worth over thirty percent of your grade,” Spock said shrewdly.

     “I know it sounds – ” Nyota started, the gears of her brain trying to engineer a plausible emergency that didn’t involve telling him that a student he’d never heard of was a Nine, but Spock interrupted her.

     “However, an understanding your character leads me to believe that this matter distracting you from the submission must be of great importance. I am headed to the linguistics wing, and it would be logical for me to submit your essay while you run your critical errand.”

     She blinked. It wasn’t proper for a member of Starfleet staff to submit a student’s essay for them. Especially not for a Vulcan member.

     But she’d take what she could get.

     “Really, sir? Thank you!”

     “It is only logical,” Spock replied, taking her PADD. “However, before you depart I would like to ask if the information on Tarsus I gave you clearance for was of any benefit to your studies?”

     Nyota was momentarily taken by surprise. Spock was making conversation? Even though he spoke to her more than any other members of the student body, he was never exactly a social butterfly.

     “Yes,” she managed when she got over her surprise, which turned to pleasure. “It was quite useful material to use as a comparison to the victims of other incidents.”

     It wasn’t exactly a lie.

     “I am gratified to hear that. I will keep you no longer.” He gave her a short nod.

     “Have a nice day.”

     “Thank you, Cadet Uhura.”

     She watched him leave, faintly stunned and quite pleased, before she remembered her mission, and took off again.

     Nyota was breathless when she arrived at the library, and when she tried to speak to McCoy, who was seated beneath the photograph of Winona Kirk and Hoshi Sato , she could only let out a gasp.

     He raised an amused eyebrow.

     “We need,” she panted, “to find – Gaila. Right now.”

     McCoy studied her for a moment. “Is this about Jim?”

     She nodded furiously.

     McCoy’s expression darkened, and he rose, tucking his PADD underneath his arm.

     “Have some water first,” he advised.

     “This is more important than hydration,” she told him.

     “Is it really?”

* * *

 

     Gaila was in an engineering practical until almost six o’clock, and so, infuriatingly, it was only after dinner that Nyota could find her. By that time, McCoy was sent off for a shift in one of the academy’s numerous medbays, and when Nyota eventually worked out which one he was working in, she was at least twice as stressed as before.

     It was unbelievable that Kirk was not only of the Nine, he was _the_ Nine Gill spoke of in his lectures. What was it Gill had said precisely?

_…escaped under the influence of one of the eldest … believed to have spent the remaining months protecting the others…_

     A born leader even back then, Nyota realised as she dragged Gaila into the medbay behind her.

     McCoy was the only one on duty, and the only one _there_ besides themselves. This _was_ the quietest medbay in the academy; it was a fair way away from the assault course which was where most injuries on campus occurred.

     “So what’s the news?” Gaila asked curiously.

     McCoy looked wary, but just as interested.

     Nyota opened her mouth, wondering how to breach the subject, but the first thing that came out was:

     “We were wrong.”

     McCoy frowned, folding his arms across the front of his white med uniform. “Wrong? About Sato?”

     “Was it somebody else he knew?” Gaila asked.

     “No,” Nyota said, feeling her heart beat harder in her chest. “I think Sato’s death still hit him, but I don’t think she’s why he hates talking about Tarsus. I think – ”

     She stopped.

     “You think what?”

     Nyota took a deep breath, and looked around the medbay. They were definitely the only people in there. “I think – no, actually, I _know_. I know that Jim was _on_ Tarsus.”

     McCoy and Gaila stared at her blankly for a few, long moments.

     “ _What?_ ”

     “But he was so young … no, wait, are you saying he’s a Nine?”

     “Yes,” Nyota said definitely. A little part inside her shrivelled at having to say it.

     McCoy was looking dangerously close to snapping a hypo in half. “How did you find this out? Did you get another file?”

     “No.” She sighed, and sat at the edge of one of the sickbeds. “I was walking through a corridor to drop off an essay, when I heard someone crying in a lecture theatre.”

     “Jim was crying?” McCoy looked disbelieving.

     “Did I say it was Jim? No. Let me finish. I heard someone crying, and I was about to go in and see who it was when I heard Jim talking to them.”

     McCoy and Gaila’s gazes were fixed upon Nyota. She felt terrible; not from their attention, but at what she was telling them. It felt as though it wasn’t true until she said it, and if she just kept quiet then Jim Kirk’s past would somehow change and he would have had some semblance of a happy childhood.

     “He was talking to a Nine. I know he was, because the kid actually said that they watched Kodos kill their mother. And before Jim had said something like ‘we survived, didn’t we’, but I didn’t put it together until the kid outright said that they wouldn’t have survived either if Jim hadn’t grabbed them and saved them.”

     Gaila was blinking rapidly, and McCoy seemed frozen.

     “That wasn’t all.” Nyota took another breath. “The way they said it… I think Jim was the leader of the Nines.”

     “The one Professor Gill was talking about?” Gaila managed.

     McCoy opened his mouth to say something too, but there was only a faintly strangled sound.

     “Yes. Now we have to work out what to do.”

* * *

 

     Nyota’s heart was in her throat when she entered the mess hall the next morning. It took only a few seconds to find Jim – when had she started referring to him as Jim? Had it been yesterday? Or even earlier than that? He’d always been Kirk to her.

     He was sitting alone, slouching in his seat, missing his mouth with a fork of beans as he read an article or something on a PADD. Nyota exchanged looks with McCoy and Gaila, who nodded seriously at her.

     “Jim,” Nyota said, and he looked up, stunned that she’d used his first name. His expression changed infinitesimally as he saw McCoy and Gaila standing grimly behind her, but he wiped it away with a smirk.

     “Ah, Athena. Are you staging an intervention? You’re gonna have to tell me what it’s about, I can’t remember _everything_ I’ve done.”

     Nyota allowed the smallest smile to climb onto her face. “Of a sorts. Jim, we need to speak with you.”


End file.
